Field of the Disclosure
The present disclosure generally relates to memory systems and, more particularly, to hybrid memory systems.
Description of the Related Art
In conventional processing systems, migration of memory pages between different memories of a memory hierarchy are orchestrated by the host processor, either through the use of direct memory access (DMA) engines or the execution of load/store instructions. Such page migrations involve the reading of the contents from the source page into the host processor and then writing the contents out from the host processor to the destination page. This page migration process thus often requires significant stalling of other processes as it often consumes resources of the host processor and the bandwidth of the memory bus connecting the host processor to the source and destination memories. Moreover, conventional approaches to page migrations require that the system software (e.g., the operating system) executing on the host processor make the page migration decisions among the different levels of the memory hierarchy and maintain the address translation information necessary to account for implemented page migrations. This decision process, and the associated address translation maintenance, can tax the efficiency of the system software.